UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 

BROWSING  ROOM 


GIFT  OF 


LIFE  EVERLASTING 


LIFE 
EVERLASTING 


BY 


JOHN  FISKE 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,    MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

#,  Cambribge 


COPYRIGHT,    1901,   BY  ABBY  M.   FISKB,  EXECUTRIX 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


Published  September, 


NOTE 

ON  the  evening  of  December  19,  1900, 
Mr.  Fiske  delivered  in  Sanders    Theatre, 
Cambridge,  the  address  here  printed.     It 
was  given  at  the  request  of  Harvard  Uni- 
versity, in  accordance  with  the  terms  of 
the  Ingersoll  lectureship,  but  it  stood  clearly 
in  Mr.  Fiske's  mind  as  a  continuation,  and 
in  a  sense  the   completion,  of  that  series 
<       of  philosophic  studies  successively  issued 
^       under  the  titles,  "The  Destiny   of  Man 
viewed  in  the  Light  of  his  Origin,"  "  The 
jj        Idea  of  God  as  affected  by  Modern  Know- 
iS        ledge,"  and  "Through  Nature  to  God." 
Mr.  Fiske  delayed  the  publication  of  "  Life 
Everlasting,"  and  it  is  possible  that  he  de- 
signed amplifying  it.     Yet,  as  he  stated  in 


6  NOTE 

his  Preface  to  "The  Idea  of  God,"  that 
both  that  book  and  "  The  Destiny  of 
Man  "  were  printed  exactly  as  delivered, 
''without  the  addition,  or  subtraction,  or 
alteration  of  a  single  word,"  so  he  may 
have  intended  to  print  this  study  in  the 
same  way.  At  any  rate  it  is  now  printed 
exactly  as  it  was  delivered,  his  perfectly 
clear  manuscript  being  carefully  followed. 

4  PARK  STREET,  BOSTON 
Autumn, 


THE   INGERSOLL  LEC- 
TURESHIP 

Extract  from  the  will  of  Miss  Caroline 

Haskell  Ingersoll,  who  died  in 

Keene,  County  of  Cheshire, 

New  Hampshire  ,  Jan. 

26, 


FIRST.  In  carrying  out  the  wishes  of 
my  late  beloved  father,  George  Gold- 
thwait  Ingersoll,  as  declared  by  him  in  his 
last  will  and  testament,  I  give  and  be- 
queath to  Harvard  University  in  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.,  where  my  late  father  was 
graduated,  and  which  he  always  held  in 
love  and  honor,  the  sum  of  Five  thousand 


8  NOTE 

dollars  ($5,000)  as  a  fund  for  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  Lectureship  on  a  plan  some- 
what similar  to  that  of  the  Dudleian  lecture, 
that  is  —  one  lecture  to  be  delivered  each 
year,  on  any  convenient  day  between  the 
last  day  of  May  and  the  first  day  of  De- 
cember, on  this  subject,  "  the  Immortality 
of  Man,"  said  lecture  not  to  form  a  part 
of  the  usual  college  course,  nor  to  be  de- 
livered by  any  Professor  or  Tutor  as  part  of 
his  usual  routine  of  instruction,  though  any 
such  Professor  or  Tutor  may  be  appointed 
to  such  service.  The  choice  of  said  lecturer 
is  not  to  be  limited  to  any  one  religious  de- 
nomination, nor  to  any  one  profession,  but 
may  be  that  of  either  clergyman  or  layman, 
the  appointment  to  take  place  at  least  six 
months  before  the  delivery  of  said  lecture. 
The  above  sum  to  be  safely  invested  and 
three  fourths  of  the  annual  interest  thereof 
to  be  paid  to  the  lecturer  for  his  services 


NOTE  9 

and  the  remaining  fourth  to  be  expended 
in  the  publishment  and  gratuitous  distri- 
bution of  the  lecture,  a  copy  of  which  is 
always  to  be  furnished  by  the  lecturer  for 
such  purpose.  The  same  lecture  to  be 
named  and  known  as  "  the  Ingersoll  lecture 
on  the  Immortality  of  Man." 


LIFE  EVERLASTING 


LIFE 
EVERLASTING 


FEW  incidents  in  ancient  history 
are  more  tragic  than  the  death 
of  Pompey.     The  spectacle  of 
the  mighty  warrior  who  had  conquered 
the  Orient  and  contended  with  Csesar 
for  the  mastery  of  the  world,  a  de- 
feated and  despairing  fugitive,  treach- 
erously murdered  and  lying  unburied 
on  the  Egyptian  strand,  was  one  that 
drew   tears   from  Csesar  himself  and 


i4     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

from  many  another.  Yet  among  the 
poets  of  the  sixteenth  century  Renais- 
sance there  was  one  who  took  a  dif- 
ferent view  of  the  matter.  In  an 
epigram  of  incomparable  beauty  Fran- 
cesco Molsa  exclaims :  — 

Dux,  Pharea  quamvis  jaceas  inhumatus  arena, 
Non  ideo  fati  est  ssevior  ira  tui : 

Indignum  fiierat  tellus  tibi  victa  sepulcrum  ; 
Non  decuit  ccelo,  te,  nisi,  Magne,  tegi  ! 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  preserve 
in  a  translation  the  peculiar  charm  of 
these  lines,  but  a  friend  of  mine  in  one 
of  the  pleasant  student  days  of  forty 
years  ago  produced  this  happy  and 
fitting  paraphrase :  — 

We  grieve  not,  Pompey,  that  to  thee 

No  earthly  tomb  was  given  ; 
All  lands  subdued,  nought  else  was  free 

To  shelter  thee  but  Heaven  ! 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     15 

Here  the  art  of  the  poet  lies  in  the 
boldness  with  which  he  seizes  upon 
one  of  the  most  subtle  and  startling 
effects  of  contrast.  In  the  very  cir- 
cumstance which  to  the  ancient  mind 
was  the  acme  of  humiliation  and  hor- 
ror his  genius  discerns  the  occasion 
for  most  exalted  panegyric,  the  bitter- 
ness of  death  is  lost  in  the  abounding 
triumph  of  the  soul  enlarged  and  set 
free,  the  attributes  of  woe  are  trans- 
formed into  crowning  glories. 

It  is  just  in  this  spirit  of  the  Mo- 
denese  poet  that  mankind  has  sought 
to  take  away  from  death  its  sting, 
from  the  grave  its  victory.  That 
solemn  moment  in  which,  for  those 
who  have  gone  before  and  for  us  who 
are  to  follow,  the  eye  of  sense  beholds 
naught  save  the  ending  of  the  world, 


T    16     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

the  entrance  upon  a  black  and  silent 
eternity,  the  eye  of  faith  declares  to 
be  the  supreme  moment  of  a  new 
birth  for  the  disenthralled  soul,  the 
introduction  to  a  new  era  of  life  com- 
pared with  which  the  present  one  is 
not  worthy  of  the  name.  Tts  8'  oISez>, 
exclaims  Euripides, 

Tis  8'  oTSev  el  TO  t,yv  ju,eV  eon  Ko.rOa.vuVy 
To  KarOaveLV  8e  £g  v  ; 

Who  can  tell  but  that  this  which  we 
call  life  is  really  death,  from  which 
what  we  call  death  is  an  awakening? 
From  this  vantage  ground  of  thought 
the  human  soul  comes  to  look  with- 
out dread  upon  the  termination  of 
this  terrestrial  existence.  The  failure 
of  the  bodily  powers,  the  stoppage 
of  the  fluttering  pulse,  the  cold  still- 
ness upon  the  features  so  lately 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     17 

wreathed  in  smiles  of  merriment,  the 
corruption  of  the  tomb,  the  breaking 
of  the  ties  of  love,  the  loss  of  all  that 
has  given  value  to  existence,  the  dull 
blankness  of  irremediable  sorrow,  the 
knell  of  everlasting  farewells,  —  all 
this  is  seized  upon  by  the  sovereign 
imagination  of  man  and  transformed 
into  a  scene  of  transcending  glory, 
such  as  in  all  the  vast  career  of  the 
universe  is  reserved  for  humanity 
alone.  In  the  highest  of  creatures 
the  Divine  immanence  has. acquired 
sufficient  concentration  and  steadiness 
to  survive  the  dissolution  of  the  flesh 
and  assert  an  individuality  untram- 
melled by  the  limitations  which  in 
the  present  life  everywhere  persis- 
tently surround  it.  Upon  this  view 
death  is  not  a  calamity  but  a  boon, 


i8     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

not  a  punishment  inflicted  upon  Man, 
but  the  supreme  manifestation  of 
his  exceptional  prerogative  as  chief 
among  God's  creatures.  Thus  the 
faith  in  immortal  life  is  the  great 
poetic  achievement  of  the  human 
mind,  it  is  all-pervasive,  it  is  con- 
cerned with  every  moment  and  every 
aspect  of  our  existence  as  moral  indi- 
viduals, and  it  is  the  one  thing  that 
makes  this  world  inhabitable  for  be- 
ings constructed  like  ourselves.  The 
destruction  of  this  sublime  poetic 
conception  would  be  like  depriving  a 
planet  of  its  atmosphere;  it  would 
leave  nothing  but  a  moral  desert  as 
cold  and  dead  as  the  savage  surface 
of  the  moon. 

We   have    now   to  consider    this 
supreme  poetic  achievement  of  man  — 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     19 

his  belief  in  his  own  Immortality  —  in 
the  light  of  our  modern  studies  of 
evolution;  we  must  notice  some  dis- 
tinctions between  its  earlier  and  later 
stages,  and  briefly  examine  some  of 
the  objections  which  have  been  alleged 
in  the  name  of  science  against  the 
validity  of  the  belief. 

Here,  as  in  all  departments  of  the 
efflorescence  of  the  human  mind,  the 
beginnings  were  lowly,  and  necessarily 
so.  Nothing  very  lofty  or  far-reach- 
ing could  be  expected  from  the  kind 
of  brain  that  was  encased  in  the  Nean- 
derthal skull.  Among  existing  sav- 
ages there  are  tribes  concerning  which 
travellers  have  doubted  whether  they 
possess  ideas  that  can  properly  be 
called  religious.  But  wherever  untu- 
tored humanity  exists  we  find  the  con- 


20     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

ception  of  a  world  of  ghosts  more  or 
less  distinctly  elaborated ;  the  throng- 
ing simulacra  of  departed  tribesmen 
linger  near  their  accustomed  haunts, 
keenly  sensitive  to  favour  or  neglect, 
and  quick  to  punish  all  infractions  of 
the  rules  which  the  stern  exigencies  of 
life  in  the  wilderness  have  prescribed 
for  the  conduct  of  the  tribe.  This 
crude  primeval  ghost-world  is  thus  al- 
ready closely  associated  with  the  ethi- 
cal side  of  life,  and  out  of  this  associ- 
ation have  grown  some  of  the  most 
colossal  governing  agencies  by  which 
the  development  of  human  society  has 
been  influenced.  It  is  therefore  not 
without  reason  that  modem  students 
of  anthropology  devote  so  much  time 
to  animism  and  fetishism  and  other 
crude  workings  of  that  savage  intelli- 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     21 

gence  of  which   the  primeval  ghost- 
world  is  a  product. 

It  is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  the  sav- 
age's notion  of  ghosts  may  have  ori- 
ginated chiefly  in  his  experience  of 
dreams,  and  this  is  the  explanation  at 
present  most  in  favour.  The  sleeping 
warrior  ranges  far  and  wide  over  the 
country,  while  he  chases  the  buffalo 
and  joins  in  the  medicine  dance  with 
comrades  known  to  have  died  yet  now 
as  active  and  as  voluble  as  himself,  but 
suddenly  the  scene  changes  and  he  is 
back  in  his  familiar  hut  surrounded  by 
his  people  who  can  testify  that  he  has 
not  for  a  moment  left  them.  It  is  not 
unlikely,  I  say,  that  the  notion  of  one's 
conscious  self  as  something  which  can 
quit  the  material  body  and  return  to 
it  may  have  started  in  such  often- 


22     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

repeated  humble  experiences.  It  can 
hardly  be  doubted,  however,  that  this 
savage  conception  of  the  detachable 
conscious  self  is  simply  the  primitive 
phase  of  the  Christian  conception  of 
the  conscious  soul  which  dwells  within 
the  perishable  body  and  quits  it  at 
death.  Through  many  stages  of  elab- 
oration and  refinement  the  sequence 
between  the  two  conceptions  is  unmis- 
takable. 

At  this  point  the  materialist  inter- 
poses with  an  argument  which  he  re- 
gards as  crushing.  He  reminds  us 
that  if  we  would  estimate  the  value  of 
an  idea,  as  of  a  race-horse  or  a  mastiff, 
it  is  well  to  take  a  look  at  its  pedigree. 
What,  then,  is  to  be  said  —  he  scorn- 
fully asks  —  of  a  doctrine  of  personal 
immortality  which  when  reduced  to 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     23 

its  lowest  terms  is  seen  to  have  started 
in  a  savage's  misinterpretation  of  his 
dreams  ?  What  more  is  needed  to 
prove  it  unworthy  of  the  serious  at- 
tention of  a  scientific  student  of  na- 
ture *?  On  the  other  hand,  the  student 
whose  mood  is  truly  scientific  will 
feel  that  one  of  mankind's  cardinal  be- 
liefs must  not  be  dismissed  too  lightly 
because  of  the  crudeness  and  error  in 
that  primitive  stratum  of  human 
thought  in  which  it  first  took  root.  In 
his  perceptions  within  certain  limits 
the  savage  is  eminently  keen  and 
accurate,  but  when  it  comes  to  intel- 
lectual judgments  that  go  at  all  below 
the  surface  of  things  his  mind  is  a  mere 
farrago  of  grotesque  fancies,  wherein, 
nevertheless,  some  kernels  of  truth 
are  here  and  there  embedded.  It  is  a 


24     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

long  way  from  the  dragon  swallowing 
the  sun  to  the  interposition  of  the 
moon's  dark  body  between  us  and  that 
luminary.  The  dragon  was  a  figment 
of  fancy,  but  the  eclipse  was  none  the 
less  a  fact 

Now  if  we  may  take  an  illustration 
from  the  workings  of  an  infant's  mind, 
it  is  pretty  clearly  made  out  that  as 
baby  sits  propped  among  his  pillows 
and  turns  his  eyes  hither  and  thither 
in  following  his  mother's  movements 
to  and  fro  in  the  room,  she  seems  in 
coming  toward  him  to  enlarge  and  in 
going  away  to  diminish  in  size,  like 
Alice  in  Wonderland.  It  is  only  with 
the  education  of  the  eye  and  the  small 
muscles  which  adjust  it  that  the  larger 
area  subtended  on  the  retina  instantly 
means  comparative  nearness  and  the 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     25 

smaller  area  comparative  remoteness. 
At  first  the  sensations  are  interpreted 
directly,  and  the  impression  upon 
baby's  nascent  intelligence  is  a  gross 
error.  The  mother  is  not  waxing 
great  and  small  by  turns,  but  only  ap- 
proaching and  receding.  If,  however, 
we  consider  that  in  baby's  mind  the 
enlarged  retinal  spot  means  more  and 
the  diminished  spot  less  of  the  pleasur- 
able feelings  excited  by  a  familiar  and 
gracious  presence,  the  approach  of 
which  is  greeted  with  smiles  and  out- 
stretched arms,  while  its  departure  is 
bemoaned  with  cries  and  tears,  we  see 
that  as  to  the  essentials  of  the  situation 
the  dawning  intelligence  is  entirely 
right,  although  its  specific  interpreta- 
tion is  quite  wrong.  Mamma  has  not 
really  dwindled  and  vanished  like  the 


26     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

penny  in  a  conjurer's  palm,  but  has 
only  flitted  from  the  field  of  vision. 

To  come  back  now  to  our  primeval 
savage ;  when  he  sees  in  a  dream  his 
deceased  comrade  and  mistakes  the 
vision  for  a  reality,  his  error  is  not  con- 
cerned with  the  most  fundamental  part 
of  the  matter.  The  all-important  fact 
is  that  this  dreaming  savage  has  some- 
how acquired  a  mental  attitude  toward 
death  which  is  totally  different  from 
that  of  all  other  animals,  and  is  there- 
fore peculiarly  human.  Throughout 
the  half-dozen  invertebrate  branches 
or  sub-kingdoms,  where  intelligence  is 
manifested  only  in  its  lower  forms  of 
reflex  action  and  instinct,  we  find  no 
evidence  that  any  creature  has  come 
to  know  of  death.  There  is  a  sense, 
no  doubt,  in  which  we  may  say  that 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     27 

the  love  of  life  is  universal.  As  a 
rule,  all  animals  shun  danger,  and 
natural  selection  maintains  this  rule 
by  the  pitiless  slaughter  of  all  delin- 
quents, of  all  in  whom  the  needful  in- 
herited tendencies  are  too  weak.  But 
in  the  lower  animal  grades  and  in 
the  vegetal  world  the  courting  of  life 
and  the  shrinking  from  death  go  on 
without  conscious  intelligence,  as  the 
blades  of  grass  in  a  meadow  or  the 
clustering  leaves  upon  a  tree  compete 
with  one  another  for  the  maximum  of 
exposure  to  sunshine  until  perhaps 
stout  boughs  and  stems  are  warped  or 
twisted  in  the  struggle.  Among  in- 
vertebrates, even  when  we  get  so  high 
as  lobsters  and  cuttlefish,  the  con- 
sciousness attendant  upon  the  seizing 
of  prey  and  the  escape  from  enemies 


28     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

probably  does  not  extend  beyond  the 
facts  within  the  immediate  sphere  of 
vision.  Even  among  those  ants  that 
have  marshalled  hosts  and  grand  tac- 
tics there  is  doubtless  no  such  thing 
as  meditation  of  death.  Passing  to 
the  vertebrates,  it  is  not  until  we  reach 
the  warm-blooded  birds  and  mam- 
mals that  we  find  what  we  are  seek- 
ing. Among  sundry  birds  and  mam- 
mals we  see  indications  of  a  dawning 
recognition  of  the  presence  of  death. 
An  early  manifestation  is  the  sense  of 
bereavement  when  the  maternal  in- 
stinct is  rudely  disturbed,  as  in  the 
cow  mourning  for  her  calf.  This  feel- 
ing goes  a  little  way,  but  not  a  great 
way,  beyond  the  sense  of  physical 
discomfort,  and  is  soon  relieved  by 
milking.  Much  more  intense  and 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     29 

abiding  is  the  feeling  of  bereavement 
among  birds  that  mate  for  life,  and 
among  the  higher  apes,  and  it  reaches 
its  culmination  in  the  dog  whose  in- 
telligence and  affections  have  been  so 
profoundly  modified  through  his  im- 
mensely long  comradeship  with  man. 
Nowhere  in  literature  do  we  strike 
upon  a  deeper  note  of  pathos  than  in 
Scott's  immortal  lines  on  the  dog  who 
starved  while  watching  his  young 
master's  lifeless  body,  alone  upon  a 
Highland  moor :  — 

"  How  long  didst  thou  think  that  his  silence  was 

slumber  ? 
When  the   wind  stirred   his  garment,  how  oft 

didst  thou  start  ! ' ' 

Yet  even  this  devoted  creature  could 
have  carried  his  thoughts  but  little 
way  toward  the  point  reached  by  our 


30     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

dreaming  savage  with  his  incipient 
ghost-world.  More  power  of  abstrac- 
tion and  generalization  was  needed. 
While  the  sight  of  the  killing  of  a 
fellow-creature  may  arouse  violent 
terror  in  the  higher  mammals  below 
man,  there  is  nothing  to  indicate  that 
the  sight  of  the  dead  body  awakens 
in  the  dumb  spectator  any  general 
conceptions  in  which  his  own  ulti- 
mate doom  is  included.  The  only 
feeling  aroused  seems  to  vary  between 
utter  indifference  and  faint  curiosity. 
Professor  Shaler  makes  a  statement  of 
cardinal  importance  in  this  connection 
when  he  says:  "If  we  should  seek 
some  one  mark  which,  in  the  intellect- 
ual advance  from  the  brutes  to  man, 
might  denote  the  passage  to  the  hu- 
man side,  we  might  well  find  it  in  the 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     31 

moment  when  it  dawned  on  the  nas- 
cent man  that  death  was  a  mystery 
which  he  had  in  his  turn  to  meet." 1 

It  is  therefore  interesting  to  note 
that  the  first  approaches,  albeit  remote 
ones,  toward  a  realizing  sense  of  death 
occur  among  those  animals  in  which 
the  beginnings  of  family  life  have 
been  made,  and  the  habitual  exercise 
of  altruistic  emotions  helps  to  widen 
the  intelligence  and  facilitate  the  ap- 
propriation to  one's  self  of  the  expe- 
riences of  one's  comrades  and  mates. 
Such  is  the  case  with  permanently 
mated  birds  and  with  the  higher  apes, 
while  the  case  of  the  dog,  exceptional 
as  it  is  through  his  acquired  depend- 
ence upon  man,  has  similar  implica- 
tions. Now  I  have  elsewhere  proved 
1  Shaler,  The  Individual,  p.  194. 


32     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

and  repeatedly  illustrated  that  the 
leading  peculiarity  which  distinguished 
man's  apelike  progenitors  from  all 
other  creatures  was  the  progressive 
increase  in  the  duration  of  infancy, 
which  was  a  direct  consequence  of 
expanding  intelligence,  and  was  more- 
over the  immediate  cause  of  the  gen- 
esis of  the  human  family  and  of  hu- 
man society.  It  appears  now  that 
the  realizing  sense  of  death,  such  as 
we  find  it  in  untutored  men  of  primi- 
tive habits  of  thought,  has  originated 
in  the  selfsame  circumstances  which 
have  wrought  the  mighty  change  from 
gregariousness  to  sociality,  from  the 
general  level  of  mammalian  existence 
to  the  unique  level  of  humanity.  I 
have  elsewhere  called  attention  to  the 
profoundly  interesting  fact  that  the 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     33 

notion  of  an  Unseen  World  beyond 
that  in  which  we  lead  our  daily  lives 
is  coeval  with  the  earliest  beginnings 
of  Humanity  upon  our  planet.  We 
may  now  observe  that  it  adds  greatly 
to  the  interest  and  to  the  significance 
of  this  fact,  when  we  find  that  the  very 
circumstances  which  tended  to  single 
out  our  progenitors,  and  raise  them 
from  the  average  mammalian  level 
into  Manhood,  tended,  also  to  make 
them  realize  the  problem  of  death 
and  meet  it  with  a  solution.  The 
grouping  of  facts  now  begins  to  make 
it  appear  that  this  primeval  solution 
was  but  the  natural  outcome  of  the 
whole  cosmic  process  that  had  gone 
before ;  that  when  nascent  Humanity 
first  eluded  the  burden  of  the  problem 
by  rising  above  it,  this  was  but  part 


34     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

and  parcel  of  the  unprecedented  cos- 
mic operation  through  which  man's 
Humanity  was  developed  and  de- 
clared. The  long  and  cumulative 
play  of  cause  and  effect  which  wrought 
the  lengthening  of  the  period  of  help- 
less babyhood  and  the  correlative 
maternal  care,  and  which  thus  differ- 
entiated the  non-human  horde  of  pri- 
mates into  a  group  of  human  clans, 
was  attended  by  a  strong  development 
of  the  sympathetic  feelings  as  it  vastly 
increased  the  mutual  dependence 
among  individuals.  During  the  same 
period  the  gradual  acquirement  of 
articulate  speech  was  accompanied 
by  a  great  increase  in  the  powers 
of  abstraction  and  generalization. 
These  new  capacities  were  applied  to 
the  interpretation  of  death,  just  as 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     35 

they  were  applied  to  all  other  things ; 
and  thus,  in  the  very  process  of  be- 
coming human,  our  progenitors  arose 
to  the  consciousness  of  death  as  some- 
thing with  which  humanity  has  always 
and  everywhere  to  reckon.  From  the 
earliest  and  most  rudimentary  stages 
of  the  process,  however,  the  conception 
of  death  was  not  of  an  event  which 
puts  an  end  to  human  individuality, 
but  of  an  event  which  human  indi- 
viduality survives.  If  we  look  at  the 
circumstances  of  the  genesis  of  man- 
kind purely  from  the  naturalist's  point 
of  view,  it  cannot  fail  to  be  highly 
significant  that  the  mental  attitude 
toward  death  should  from  the  first 
have  assumed  this  form,  that  the  hu- 
man soul  should  from  the  start  have 
felt  itself  encompassed  not  only  by 


36     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

the  endless  multitude  of  visible  and 
tangible  and  audible  things,  but  also 
by  an  Unseen  World.  In  view  of 
this  striking  fact  it  is  of  small  moment 
that  the  earliest  generalizations  which 
in  course  of  time  developed  into  a 
world  of  ghosts  and  demons  were 
grotesquely  erroneous.  Primitive 
theorizing  is  sure  to  be  faulty  and  in 
the  light  of  later  knowledge  comes 
to  seem  absurd  and  bizarre.  Such 
has  been  in  modern  days  the  fate  of 
the  savage's  ghost-world,  along  with 
the  Ptolemaic  astronomy,  the  doctrine 
of  signatures,  and  many  another  sam- 
ple of  the  "  wisdom  of  the  ancients." 
But  the  fact  that  primitive  man  mis- 
stated his  relation  to  the  Unseen 
World  in  no  wise  militates  against 
the  truth  of  his  assumption  that  such 
a  world  exists  for  us. 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     37 

To  this  question  as  to  the  truth 
of  the  assumption  I  shall  return  in 
the  sequel.  We  have  very  briefly 
sketched  the  manner  of  its  origination, 
and  here  we  may  leave  this  part  of 
our  subject  with  the  remark  that  the 
belief  in  a  future  life,  in  a  world  un- 
seen to  mortal  eyes,  is  not  only  coeval 
with  the  beginnings  of  the  human 
race  but  is  also  coextensive  with  it  in 
all  its  subsequent  stages  of  develop- 
ment. It  is  in  short  one  of  the  differ- 
ential attributes  of  humanity.  Man 
is  not  only  the  primate  who  possesses 
articulate  speech  and  the  power  of 
abstract  reasoning,  who  is  character- 
ized by  a  long  period  of  plastic  in- 
fancy and  a  corresponding  capacity 
for  progress,  who  is  grouped  in  socie- 
ties of  which  the  primordial  units  were 


38     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

clans ;  he  is  not  only  all  this,  but  he 
is  the  creature  who  expects  to  survive 
the  event  of  physical  death.  This  ex- 
pectation was  one  of  his  acquisitions 
gained  while  attaining  to  the  human 
plane  of  existence,  and  the  interest- 
ing question  in  the  natural  history  of 
man  is  whether  it  is  to  be  regarded 
as  a  permanent  acquisition,  or  is  rather 
analogous  to  the  organ  that  subserves, 
perhaps  through  long  ages,  an  impor- 
tant but  temporary  purpose,  after  the 
fulfilment  of  which  it  dwindles  into  a 
rudiment  neglected  and  forgotten. 

I  do  not  overlook  the  existence  of 
divers  theological  systems  in  which 
the  attitude  toward  a  future  life  is 
very  different  from  that  with  which 
our  Christian  education  has  made  us 
familiar.  We  sometimes  hear  such 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     39 

systems  cited  as  exceptions  to  the  al- 
leged universality  of  the  human  belief 
in  immortality.  The  Buddhist  looks 
forward  through  myriads  of  successive 
sentient  existences  to  a  culminating 
state  of  Nirwana,  which  if  not  actual 
extinction  is  at  least  complete  quies- 
cence, the  absolute  zero  of  being.  It 
hardly  needs  saying,  however,  that 
Buddhistic  theology,  though  it  may 
have  arrived  at  such  a  zero  through 
long  flights  of  metaphysical  reasoning, 
is  nevertheless  based  in  all  its  foun- 
dations upon  the  primitive  belief  in 
man's  survival  of  death.  Sometimes 
it  is  said  that  the  Jews  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament times  had  no  proper  concep- 
tion of  immortality.  It  can  hardly  be 
maintained,  however,  that  such  stories 
as  that  of  the  conversation  at  Endor 


40     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

between  the  living  Saul  and  the  dead 
Samuel  could  emanate  from  a  people 
destitute  of  belief  in  a  life  after  death. 
In  point  of  fact  ancient  Jewish  thought 
abounds  in  traces  of  the  primitive 
ghost-world.  It  is  only  by  contrast 
with  the  glorious  and  inspiring  Chris- 
tian development  of  the  belief  in  im- 
mortality that  the  earlier  dispensation 
seems  so  jejune  and  meagre  in  its 
faith.  There  was  little  to  arouse  reli- 
gious emotion  in  the  dismal  world  of 
flitting  shadows,  the  Sheol  or  Hades 
from  which  the  Greek  hero  would  so 
gladly  have  escaped,  even  to  take  the 
most  menial  position  in  all  the  sunlit 
world.  Greek  and  Hebrew  thought, 
in  what  we  call  the  classic  ages,  stood 
alike  in  need  of  religious  revival. 
The  mythic  lore  of  the  Greek  mind 


LIFE   EVERLASTING    41 

had  flowered  luxuriantly  in  aesthetic 
fancies,  while  the  spiritual  life  of  Ju- 
daism languished  amid  strict  obedi- 
ence to  forms  and  precepts.  The  far- 
reaching  thoughts  of  Greek  philoso- 
phers and  the  lofty  ethics  of  Hebrew 
preachers  were  divorced  from  the 
primitive  ghost-world,  even  as  the 
mental  processes  of  the  modern  scholar 
are  separated  by  a  great  gulf  from 
those  of  the  woman  who  comes  to 
scrub  the  floor.  The  advent  of  Chris- 
tianity fused  together  the  various  ele- 
ments. The  doctrine  of  a  future  life 
was  endowed  with  all  the  moral  sig- 
nificance that  Jewish  thought  could 
give  to  it,  and  with  all  the  mystic 
glory  that  Hellenic  speculation  could 
contribute,  so  that  the  effect  upon  men 
was  that  of  a  fresh  revelation  of  life 


42     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

and  immortality  through  the  gospel. 
Grotesque  and  hideous  features  also 
were  brought  in  from  the  ghost-worlds 
of  the  classic  ages,  as  well  as  from  that 
of  the  Teutonic  barbarians,  and  the 
result  is  seen  in  mediseval  Christianity. 
At  no  other  time,  perhaps,  has  the 
Unseen  World  played  such  a  leading 
part  in  men's  minds  as  in  the  twelfth 
and  thirteenth  centuries  of  our  Chris- 
tian era,  in  the  age  that  witnessed  the 
culmination  of  sublimity  in  church 
architecture,  in  the  society  whose 
thought  found  comprehensive  expres- 
sion in  the  "  Summa  "  of  St.  Thomas, 
as  the  thought  of  our  times  is  ex- 
pressed in  Spencer's  "First  Princi- 
ples," in  an  intellectual  atmosphere, 
which  just  as  it  was  about  passing 
away  was  depicted  for  all  coming  time 


LIFE   EVERLASTING    43 

in  the  poem  of  Dante.  It  was  a  time 
of  spiritual  awakening  such  as  man- 
kind had  never  before  witnessed,  but 
it  was  also  an  age  of  new  problems, 
an  age  wherein  the  seeds  of  revolt 
were  thickly  germinating.  The  na- 
ture and  constitution  of  the  Unseen 
World  had  been  too  rashly  and  too 
elaborately  set  forth  in  theorems  born 
of  the  slender  knowledge  of  primitive 
times,  and  the  growing  tendency  to 
interrogate  Nature  soon  led  to  con- 
clusions which  broke  down  the  old 
edifice  of  thought.  In  the  sixteenth 
century  came  Copernicus  and  admin- 
istered such  a  shock  to  the  mind  as 
even  Luther's  defiance  of  the  papacy 
scarcely  equalled.  In  recent  days, 
when  Bishop  Wilberforce  reckoned 
without  his  host  in  trying  to  twit  Hux- 


44     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

ley  with  his  monkey  ancestry,  our 
minds  were  getting  inured  to  all  sorts 
of  audacious  innovations,  so  that  they 
did  not  greatly  disturb  us.  For  its 
unsettling  effects  upon  time-honoured 
beliefs  and  mental  habits  the  Darwin- 
ian theory  is  no  more  to  be  compared 
to  the  Copernican  than  the  invention 
of  the  steamboat  is  to  be  compared  to 
the  voyages  of  Columbus.  We  are 
in  no  danger  of  overrating  the  bewil- 
derment that  was  wrought  by  the  dis- 
covery that  our  earth  is  not  the  physi- 
cal centre  of  things,  and  that  the  sun 
apparently  does  not  exist  for  the  sole 
purpose  of  giving  light  and  warmth 
to  man's  terrestrial  habitat.  We  need 
not  wonder  that  in  conservative  Spain 
scarcely  a  century  ago  the  University 
of  Salamanca  prohibited  the  teaching 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     45 

of  the  Newtonian  astronomy.  We 
need  not  wonder  that  Galileo  should 
have  been  commanded  to  hold  his 
tongue  on  a  topic  that  seemed  to  cast 
discredit  upon  the  whole  theology  that 
assumes  man  to  be  the  central  object 
of  the  Divine  care. 

This  unsettling  of  men's  minds  was 
of  course  indefinitely  increased  by  the 
revolt  of  Descartes  against  the  scho- 
lastic philosophy,  by  Newton's  im- 
mense contributions  to  physics,  and 
by  such  discoveries  as  those  of  Har- 
vey, Black,  and  Lavoisier,  which 
showed  by  what  methods  truth  could 
be  obtained  concerning  Nature's 
operations,  and  how  different  such 
methods  were  from  those  by  which 
the  accepted  systems  of  theology  had 
been  built  up.  The  result  has  been 


46     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

wholesale  skepticism  directed  against 
everything  whatever  that  now  exists 
or  has  ever  existed  in  the  shape  of  an 
ancient  belief.  This  result  was  first 
reached  in  France  about  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the 
thoughts  of  Locke  and  Newton  were 
eagerly  absorbed  in  a  community  irri- 
tated beyond  endurance  by  social  in- 
justice, and  in  which  the  church  had 
done  much  to  forfeit  respect.  Thus 
came  about  that  violent  outbreak  of 
materialistic  atheism  which,  in  spite 
of  its  generous  aims  and  many  admi- 
rable achievements,  is  surely  one  of 
the  most  mournful  episodes  in  the 
history  of  human  thought.  The 
French  philosophers  set  an  example  to 
three  generations ;  the  note  struck  by 
Diderot  and  BufTon  and  D'Alembert 


LIFE   EVERLASTING    47 

continued  to  resound  until  the  scien- 
tific horizon  had  become  radiant  in 
every  quarter  with  the  promise  of  a 
brighter  day,  and  its  echoes  have  not 
yet  died.  It  was  but  lately  that  the 
voice  of  Lamettrie  was  heard  again 
from  the  lips  of  Strauss  and  Buechner, 
and  even  to-day  we  may  sometimes 
be  entertained  by  a  belated  eighteenth 
century  naturalist  who  is  fully  per- 
suaded that  his  denial  of  human  im- 
mortality is  an  inevitable  corollary 
from  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  In- 
deed the  progress  of  scientific  dis- 
covery has  been  so  rapid  since  the 
time  of  Diderot,  its  achievements 
have  been  so  vast,  its  results  so  mul- 
tifarious and  so  dazzling,  that  it  has 
well-nigh  absorbed  the  attention  of 
the  foremost  minds.  The  dogmas  of 


48     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

theology  seem  stale  and  empty,  the 
speculations  of  metaphysics  vain  and 
unprofitable,  in  comparison  with  the 
fascinating  marvels  of  chemistry  and 
astronomy,  of  palaeontology  and  spec- 
trum analysis;  and  it  is  natural  that 
we  should  rejoice  over  the  methods 
of  research  that  are  enabling  us  thus 
to  wrest  from  Nature  a  few  of  her 
long  guarded  secrets,  and  to  make  up 
our  minds  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
conclusions  that  are  not  obtained  or 
at  least  verified  by  such  scientific 
methods.  Daily  we  hear  sounded 
the  praises  of  observation,  of  experi- 
ment, of  comparison;  we  are  warned 
against  long  deductions,  since  the 
strength  of  any  chain  of  arguments  is 
measured  by  that  of  its  weakest  link, 
and  experience  is  perpetually  teach- 


LIFE   EVERLASTING    49 

ing  us,  to  our  vexation  and  chagrin, 
that  what  reason  says  must  be  so  is 
not  so,  that  facts  will  not  fit  hypothe- 
sis. The  more  things  we  try  to  ex- 
plain, the  better  we  realize  that  we 
live  in  a  world  of  unexplained  residua. 
Away,  then,  with  all  so-called  truths 
that  cannot  be  tested  by  weights  and 
measures,  or  other  direct  appeals  to 
the  senses !  Your  modern  philoso- 
pher will  have  nothing  of  them.  His 
system  is  composed,  from  start  to 
finish,  of  scientific  theorems.  As  for 
the  higher  speculations,  the  deeper 
generalizations,  in  which  philosophy 
has  been  wont  to  indulge  concerning 
the  aim  and  meaning  of  existence,  he 
waves  them  away  as  profitless  or  even 
mischievous.  The  world  is  full  of 
questions  as  pressing  as  they  are  baf- 


50     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

fling.  As  I  once  heard  Herbert 
Spencer  say,  "  You  cannot  take  up 
any  problem  in  physics  without  being 
quickly  led  to  some  metaphysical 
problem  which  you  can  neither  solve 
nor  evade."  It  was  in  order  to  secure 
philosophic  peace  of  mind  that  Au- 
guste  Comte  undertook  to  build  up 
what  he  called  Positive  Philosophy, 
in  which  the  existence  of  all  such 
problems  was  to  be  complacently  ig- 
nored, —  much  as  the  ostrich  seeks 
escape  from  a  dilemma  by  burying  its 
head  in  the  sand.  In  a  far  more  rev-  / 
erent  and  justifiable  spirit  the  agnostic 
like  Huxley  or  Spencer  acknowledges 
the  limitations  of  the  human  mind 
and  builds  as  far  as  he  may,  leaving 
the  rest  to  God. 

In  the  fervour  of  this  modern  reli- 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     51 

ance  upon  scientific  methods,  we  are 
warned  with  especial  emphasis  against 
all  humours  and  predilections  which 
we  may  be  in  danger  of  cherishing  as 
human  beings.  In  a  new  sense  of 
the  words  we  are  reminded  that  "  the 
heart  of  man  is  deceitful  and  desper- 
ately wicked,"  and  if  any  belief  is  es- 
pecially pleasant  or  consoling  to  us, 
forthwith  does  Science  lay  upon  us 
her  austere  command  to  mortify  the 
flesh  and  treat  the  belief  in  question 
with  exceptional  disfavour  and  sus- 
picion. Thus  there  has  grown  up  a 
kind  of  Puritanism  in  the  scientific 
temper  which,  while  announcing  its 
unalterable  purpose  to  follow  Truth 
though  she  lead  us  to  Hades,  takes  a 
kind  of  grim  satisfaction  in  empha- 
sizing the  place  of  destination. 


52     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

Now  there  can  be  no  sort  of  doubt 
that  this  rigid  and  vigorous  scientific 
temper  is  in  the  main  eminently 
wholesome  and  commendable.  In 
the  interests  of  intellectual  honesty 
there  is  nothing  which  we  need  more 
than  to  be  put  on  our  guard  against 
allowing  our  reasoning  processes  to 
be  warped  by  our  feelings.  Never- 
theless in  steering  clear  of  Scylla  it 
would  be  a  pity  to  tumble  straight 
into  the  maw  of  Charybdis,  and  it 
behooves  us  to  ask  just  how  far  the 
canons  of  scientific  method  are  com- 
petent to  guide  us  in  dealing  with  ul- 
timate questions.  Science  has  given 
us  so  many  surprises  that  our  capa- 
city for  being  shocked  or  astounded 
is  well-nigh  exhausted,  and  our  old 
unregenerate  human  nature  has  been 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     53 

bullied  and  badgered  into  something 
like  humility ;  so  that  now,  at  the  end 
of  the  greatest  and  most  bewildering 
of  centuries,  we  may  fitly  pause  for  a 
moment  and  ask  how  fares  it,  in  these 
exacting  days,  with  that  Unseen 
World  which  man  brought  with  him 
when  he  was  first  making  his  appear- 
ance on  our  planet*?  And  what  has 
science  to  say  about  that  time-hon- 
oured belief  that  the  human  soul  sur- 
vives the  death  of  the  human  body  ? 

The  position  that  science  irrevoca- 
bly condemns  such  a  belief  seems  at 
first  sight  a  very  strong  one  and  has 
unquestionably  had  a  good  deal  of 
weight  with  many  minds  of  the  pre- 
sent generation.  Throughout  the 
animal  kingdom  we  never  see  sensa- 
tion, perception,  instinct,  volition,  rea- 


54    LIFE   EVERLASTING 

soning,  or  any  of  the  phenomena 
which  we  distinguish  as  mental,  man- 
ifested except  in  connection  with 
nerve-matter  arranged  in  systems  of 
various  degrees  of  complexity.  We 
can  trace  sundry  relations  of  general 
correspondence  between  the  increasing 
manifestations  of  intelligence  and  the 
increasing  complications  of  the  ner- 
vous system.  Injuries  to  the  nervous 
structure  entail  failures  of  function, 
either  in  the  mental  operations  them- 
selves or  in  the  control  which  they 
exercise  over  the  actions  of  the  body ; 
there  is  either  psychical  aberration, 
or  loss  of  consciousness,  or  muscular 
paralysis.  At  the  moment  of  death,  •C 
as  soon  as  the  current  of  arterial  blood 
ceases  to  flow  through  the  cerebral 
vessels,  all  signs  of  consciousness 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     55 

cease  for  the  looker-on ;  and  after  the 
nervous  system  has  been  resolved  into 
its  elements,  what  reason  have  we  to 
suppose  that  consciousness  survives, 
any  more  than  that  the  wetness  of 
water  should  survive  its  separation 
into  oxygen  and  hydrogen  *? 

So  far  as  our  terrestrial  experience 
goes  there  can  be  but  one  answer  to 
such  a  question.  We  have  no  more 
warrant  in  experience  for  supposing 
consciousness  to  exist  without  a  ner- 
vous system  than  we  have  for  suppos- 
ing the  properties  of  water  to  exist 
in  a  world  destitute  of  hydrogen  and 
oxygen.  Our  power  of  framing  con- 
ceptions is  narrowly  limited  by  expe- 
rience, and  when  we  try  to  figure  to 
ourselves  the  conditions  of  a  future 
life  we  are  either  hopelessly  baffled  at 


56     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

the  start  or  else  we  fall  back  upon 
grossly  materialistic  imagery.  The 
savage's  ghost-world  is  a  mere  repeti- 
tion of  the  fights  and  hunts  with  which 
he  is  familiar.  The  early  Christians 
looked  forward  to  a  speedy  resurrec- 
tion from  Sheol,  followed  by  an  end- 
less bodily  existence  upon  a  renovated 
earth.  Dante's  pictures  of  the  Unseen 
World  are  often  so  intensely  material- 
istic as  to  seem  grotesque  in  our  more 
truly  spiritual  age.  Popular  concep- 
tions of  heaven  to-day  abound  in 
symbolism  that  is  confessedly  a  mere 
reflection  from  the  world  of  matter; 
insomuch  that  persons  of  sufficient 
culture  to  realize  the  inadequacy  of 
these  popular  images  are  wont  to 
avoid  the  difficulty  by  refraining  from 
putting  their  hopes  and  beliefs  into 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     57 

any  definite  or  describable  form. 
Among  such  minds  there  is  a  tacit 
agreement  that  the  unseen  world  must 
be  purely  spiritual  in  constitution,  yet 
no  mental  image  of  such  a  world  can 
be  formed.  We  are  all  agreed  that 
life  beyond  the  grave  would  be  a  de- 
lusion and  a  cruel  mockery  without 
the  continuance  of  the  tender  house- 
hold affections  which  alone  make  the 
present  life  worth  living ;  but  to  im- 
agine the  recognition  of  soul  by  soul 
apart  from  the  material  structure  in 
which  we  have  known  soul  to  be 
manifested,  apart  from  the  look  of  the 
loved  face,  the  tones  of  the  loved 
voice,  or  the  renewed  touch  of  the 
long  vanished  hand,  is  something 
quite  beyond  our  power.  Even  if 
you  try  to  imagine  your  own  psychical 


58     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

activity  as  continuing  without  the  aid 
of  the  physical  machinery  of  sensa- 
tion, you  soon  get  into  unmanageable 
difficulties.  The  furniture  of  your 
mind  consists  in  great  part  of  sensu- 
ous images,  chiefly  visual,  and  you 
cannot  in  thought  follow  yourself  into 
a  world  that  does  not  announce  itself 
to  you  through  sense  impressions. 
From  all  this  it  plainly  appears  that 
our  notion  of  the  survival  of  con- 
scious activity  apart  from  material 
conditions  is  not  /only  unsupported  < 
by  any  evidence  that  can  be  gathered  ' 
from  the  world  of  which  we  have  ex- 
perience but  is  utterly  and  hopelessly 
inconceivable. 

The  argument  here  summarized  is 
in  no  way  profound  or  abstruse  ;  it  is 
extremely  obvious,  and  as  its  proposi- 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     59 

tions  cannot  well  be  controverted,  it 
has  had  great  weight  with  many  peo- 
ple. I  dare  say  it  may  be  held  re- 
sponsible for  the  larger  part  of  con-  / 
temporary  skepticism  as  to  the  future'; 
life.  People  have  grown  accustomed 
to  demanding  scientific  support  for 
doctrines,  whereas  this  doctrine  is 
not  only  destitute  of  scientific  support 
but  lands  us  in  inconceivabilities;  is 
it  not,  then,  untenable  and  absurd? 
Such  is  the  common  argument. 
There  are  those  who  seek  to  meet  it 
with  inductive  evidence  of  the  pre- 
sence of  disembodied  spirits  or  ghosts 
which  hold  direct  communication 
only  with  certain  specially  endowed 
persons  known  as  mediums.  Con- 
cerning such  inductive  evidence  it 
may  be  said  that  very  little  has  as  yet 


60    LIFE   EVERLASTING 

been  brought  forward  which  is  likely 
to  make  much  impression  upon  minds 
trained  in  investigation.  If  its  value 
as  evidence  were  to  be  conceded,  it 
would  seem  to  point  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  grade  of  intelligence 
which  survives  the  grave  is  about  on 
a  par  with  that  which  in  the  present 
life  we  are  accustomed  to  shut  up  in 
asylums  for  idiots.  On  the  whole  the 
mediumistic  ideas  and  methods  are 
frankly  materialistic,  their  alleged 
communications  with  the  other  world 
are  through  sights  and  sounds,  and  if 
their  pretensions  could  be  sustained 
the  result  would  be  simply  the  reha- 
bilitation of  the  primitive  ghost-world. 
Their  theory  of  things  moves  on  so 
low  a  plane  as  hardly  to  merit  notice 
in  a  serious  philosophic  discussion. 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     61 

To  return  to  the  argument  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  survival  of  conscious 
activity  apart  from  material  conditions 
is  unsupported  by  experience  and  is 
inconceivable,  we  may  observe  that 
it  is  inconceivable  just  because  it  is 
entirely  without  foundation  in  experi- 
ence. Our  powers  of  conception  are 
narrowly  determined  by  the  limits  of 
our  experience,  and  when  that  expe- 
rience has  never  furnished  us  with  the 
materials  for  framing  a  conception  we 
simply  cannot  frame  it.  Hence  we 
cannot  conceive  of  the  conscious  soul 
as  entirely  dissociated  from  any  ma- 
terial vehicle. 

Now  we  are  prepared  to  ask,  How 
much  does  this  famous  argument 
amount  to,  as  against  the  belief  that 
the  soul  survives  the  body  ?  The 


62     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

answer  is,  Nothing !  absolutely  no- 
thing. It  not  only  fails  to  disprove 
the  validity  of  the  belief,  but  it  does 
not  raise  even  the  slightest  prima  facie 
presumption  against  it.  This  will  at 
once  become  apparent  if  we  remember 
that  human  experience  is  very  far 
indeed  from  being  infinite,  and  that 
there  are  in  all  probability  immense 
regions  of  existence  in  every  way  as 
real  as  the  region  which  we  know,  yet 
concerning  which  we  cannot  form  the 
faintest  rudiment  of  a  conception. 
Within  the  past  century  the  study  of 
light  and  other  radiant  forces  has  fur- 
nished us  with  a  suggestive  object- 
lesson.  The  luminiferous  ether  com- 
bines properties  which  are  inconceiv- 
able in  connection.  How  curious  to 
think  that  we  live  and  move  in  an 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     63 

ocean  of  ether  in  which  the  particles 
of  all  material  things  are  floating  like 
islands!  But  how  amazing  to  learn 
that  this  ocean  of  ether  is  also  an  ada- 
mantine firmament !  Is  not  this  sheer 
nonsense  *?  an  ocean  firmament  of  ether- 
adamant  !  Yet  such  seems  to  be  the 
fact,  and  our  philosophy  must  make 
the  best  of  it.  Now  suppose  that  all 
this  world  were  crowded  with  disem- 
bodied souls,  an  infinite  throng  most 
aptly  called  "the  majority,"  a  thou- 
sand or  more  on  every  spot  in  space 
as  broad  as  the  point  of  a  cambric 
needle,  in  what  way  could  we  become 
aware  of  their  existence  ?  Clearly  in 
no  way,  since  we  have  no  organ  or 
faculty  for  the  perception  of  soul 
apart  from  the  material  structure  and 
activities  in  which  it  has  been  mani- 


64     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

fested  throughout  the  whole  course  of 
our  experience.  There  we  will  sup- 
pose are  the  countless  millions,  the 
existence  of  any  one  of  whom,  could 
we  detect  it,  would  suffice  to  demon- 
strate the  doctrine  of  a  future  life,  and 
yet,  for  lack  of  the  requisite  means 
of  communication,  all  this  evidence 
is  inaccessible.  Such  an  illustration 
shows  that  "  the  entire  absence  of  tes- 
timony does  not  even  raise  a  negative 
presumption  except  in  cases  where 
testimony  is  accessible."  The  reason 
is  obvious.  Until  we  can  go  wher- 
ever the  testimony  may  be,  we  are 
not  entitled  to  affirm  that  there  is  an 
absence  of  testimony.  So  long  as  our 
knowledge  is  restricted  by  the  condi- 
tions of  this  terrestrial  life,  we  are  not 
in  a  position  to  make  negative  asser- 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     65 

tions  as  to  regions  of  existence  out- 
side of  these  conditions.  We  may 
feel  quite  free,  therefore,  to  give  due 
weight  to  any  considerations  which 
make  it  probable  that  consciousness 
survives  the  wreck  of  the  material 
body. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  see 
the  fallacy  of  Moleschott's  often- 
quoted  aphorism,  "No  thought  with- 
out phosphorus  !  "  When  this  say- 
ing was  a  new  one,  there  were  worthy 
people  who  felt  that  somehow  it  was 
all  over  with  man's  immortal  soul. 
With  phosphorus  you  light  your 
candle,  and  with  phosphorus  you  dis- 
cover Neptune  and  write  the  Fifth 
Symphony;  how  charmingly  simple 
and  convincing  !  And  yet  was  any- 
thing save  a  bit  of  rhetoric  really 


66     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

gained  by  singling  out  phosphorus 
among  the  chemical  constituents  of 
brain  tissue  rather  than  nitrogen  or 
carbon?  Suppose  the  dictum  had 
been,  "No  thought  without  a  brain." 
The  obvious  answer  would  have  been, 
"  If  you  refer  to  the  present  life,  most 
erudite  professor,  your  remark  is  true, 
but  hardly  novel  or  startling ;  if  you 
refer  to  any  condition  of  things  subse- 
quent to  death,  pray  where  did  you 
obtain  your  knowledge  ?  " 

Nevertheless  this  point  cannot  be 
disposed  of  simply  by  exhibiting  the 
flaw  in  Moleschott's  rhetoric.  His 
remark  rests  upon  the  assumption  that 
conscious  mental  phenomena  are  pro- 
ducts of  the  organic  tissues  with  which 
they  are  associated.  This  is  of  course 
the  central  stronghold  of  materialism. 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     67 

A  century  ago  the  case  was  very 
boldly  put  when  we  were  asked  to  be- 
lieve that  the  brain  secretes  thought 
as  the  liver  secretes  bile.  Nobody  to- 
day would  think  of  making  such  a 
comparison,  but  it  is  more  cautiously 
stated  that  consciousness  is  a  "  func- 
tion "  of  the  brain,  or  at  all  events  of 
the  nervous  system,  even  as  bile-mak- 
ing is  a  function  of  the  liver.  Before 
we  yield  any  modicum  of  assent  to 
this  statement  we  may  observe  that 
"  function "  is  a  word  with  a  wide 
range  of  meaning,  and  we  must  insist 
upon  some  closer  definition.  Here 
materialism  calls  to  its  aid  the  dis- 
covery of  the  correlation  and  equiva- 
lence of  forces,  one  of  the  most  stu- 
pendous achievements  of  our  century. 
We  now  know  that  heat  and  light 


68     LIFE    EVERLASTING 

and  electricity  and  actinism  are  not 
forces  generically  distinct  and  isolated 
each  from  the  others.  All  are  specific 
modes  of  molecular  motion,  transform- 
able one  into  another  at  any  moment 
as  naturally  as  a  cloud  condenses  into 
raindrops.  Any  such  molecular 
tion,  moreover,  may  come  from  the 
arrested  visible  motion  of  a  mass,  and 
may  in  turn  be  liberated  so  as  to  re- 
sume the  form  of  visible  motion,  as 
when  an  electric  current  is  transformed 
into  the  onward  movement  of  the 
trolley  car.  The  change  in  our  con- 
ception of  Nature  that  has  been 
wrought  by  this  wonderful  discovery 
is  more  profound  than  all  changes  that 
went  before.  The  balance  in  the 
hands  of  the  chemist  had  already 
proved  that  no  matter  is  ever  lost  but 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     69 

only  transformed,  and  that  every  ma- 
terial form  at  any  moment  visible  owes 
its  existence  to  the  metamorphosis  of 
some  previous  form.  So  now  it  was 
further  shown  that  the  myriad  pro- 
perties or  qualities  of  matter  are  simply 
the  expression  of  myriads  of  activities 
which  are  all  in  a  final  analysis  mo- 
tions ;  that  no  motion  is  ever  lost  but 
only  transformed,  and  that  every  kind 
of  motion  at  any  moment  perceptible 
—  whether  in  the  form  of  movement 
through  space,  or  of  light,  or  heat,  or 
electricity,  or  the  actinism  that  builds 
up  the  green  stuff  in  the  leaves  of  . 
plants  —  owes  its  existence  to  the  met- 
amorphosis of  some  previous  kind  of 
motion.  Every  living  organism  is  a 
marvellous  aggregate  of  divers  forms 
of  matter  performing  divers  character- 


70     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

istic  motions,  and  the  sum  total  of 
these  motions  is  the  whole  of  life,  as 
regarded  purely  on  its  physical  side. 
When  we  take  food  we  bring  into  the 
system  sundry  nitrogenous  and  hydro- 
carbon compounds,  each  of  which  is 
alive  with  little  energies  or  latent  ca- 
pacities for  certain  kinds  of  motion.  t 
The  oxygen  of  the  air,  especially  in 
its  unstable  form  of  ozone,  is  a  power- 
ful inciter  of  chemical  motions,  and 
when  we  breathe  it  in,  the  little  latent 
capacities  presently  become  actual 
motions.  Some  of  them  are  realized 
in  the  rhythmical  movements  of  heart 
and  lungs,  some  in  the  undulations 
that  sustain  the  animal  temperature, 
some  in  the  formation  of  the  tiny 
drops  that  collect  in  a  secreting  gland, 
some  in  the  repair  of  tissue  by  the 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     71 

substitution  of  new  complex  molecules 
for  old  ones  that  are  broken  down, 
some  in  the  contraction  of  a  group  of 
muscles,  some  in  the  changes  within 
the  substance  of  nerve  that  accompany 
conscious  thought,  sensation,  and  voli- 
tion. Ah,  yes,  here  we  come  to  it  at 
last !  We  do  not  doubt  that  all  these 
myriad  motions  are  members  in  a  series 
of  transformations,  wherein  the  ap- 
pearance of  each  results  from  the  dis- 
appearance of  its  predecessors.  We 
have  neither  the  instruments  nor  the 
calculus  to  prove  this  in  the  infinite 
multitude  of  details,  but  the  general 
theory  has  been  so  completely  estab- 
lished wherever  it  is  accessible  to  in- 
struments and  calculus  that  we  can 
have  no  hesitation  in  granting  its  uni- 
versality wherever  matter  and  motion 


72     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

are  concerned  in  any  shape  or  amount. 
No  scientific  man  will  for  a  moment 
doubt  that  the  little  vibratory  discharge 
between  cerebral  ganglia  which  accom- 
panies a  thought  is  one  member  in  a 
series  of  molecular  motions  that  might 
be  measured  and  expressed  in  terms 
of  quantity  if  we  only  possessed  an 
apparatus  sufficiently  delicate  and 
subtle. 

Now  if  such  is  the  case  with  the 
little  physical  motion  within  the  brain, 
how  is  it  with  the  accompanying 
thought  *?  Does  the  correlation  obtain 
between  physical  motions  and  con- 
scious feelings?  Are  states  of  con- 
sciousness links  in  the  Protean  series 
of  motions,  in  such  wise  that  the  vibra- 
tion within  the  brain  produces  the 
thought  or  feeling*?  In  other  words 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     73 

is  the  thought  or  feeling  merely  a 
transformed  vibration  ?  Does  a  certain 
amount  of  vibration  perish  to  be  re- 
placed by  an  exact  equivalent  in  the 
shape  of  thought  ?  and  then  does  the 
thought  'perish  in  the  act  of  giving 
place  to  other  vibrations  which  end  in 
a  visible  motion  of  muscles  *?  as  when, 
for  example,  you  hear  the  sound  of  a 
bell  and  start  toward  the  door. 

On  this  point  there  has  been  much 
confusion  of  ideas.  When  I  put  the 
question  to  Tyndall  in  conversation, 
nearly  thirty  years  ago,  he  seemed  to 
think  that  there  must  be  some  such 
completeness  of  correlation  between 
the  physical  and  the  psychical;  but 
his  mind  was  not  at  ease  on  the  sub- 
ject. Herbert  Spencer,  in  his  "First 
Principles,"  rather  cautiously  took  the 


74     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

same  direction  and  tried  to  show  how 
a  certain  amount  of  motion  might  be 
transformable  into  a  certain  amount  of 
feeling.  He  observed  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  effort  or  muscular  strain 
in  lifting  a  heavy  weight  is  more  in- 
tense than  in  lifting  a  light  weight, 
and  that  when  a  loud  sound  sets  up 
atmospheric  vibrations  of  great  ampli- 
tude the  shock  to  our  auditory  con- 
sciousness is  correspondingly  greater 
than  in  the  case  of  a  gentle  sound 
which  sets  up  vibrations  of  small  am- 
plitude. But  when  he  comes  to  the 
inner  regions  of  thought  and  emotion 
which  are  not  reached  by  percus- 
sion and  strain,  he  is  less  successful  in 
finding  illustrations.  It  is  especially 
worthy  of  note  that  in  the  final  edi- 
tion of  "First  Principles,"  published 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     75 

in  this  year  1900  and  in  Spencer's 
eighty-first,  he  goes  very  far  toward 
withdrawing  from  his  original  position, 
while  in  his  Preface  he  calls  attention 
to  this  change  as  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant in  the  book.  In  my  "  Cosmic 
Philosophy,"  published  in  1874,  I 
maintained  that  to  prove  the  transfor- 
mation of  motion  into  feeling  or  of 
feeling  into  motion  is  in  the  very  na- 
ture of  things  impossible.  In  order  to 
be  convinced  of  this,  let  us  go  back  a 
few  years  and  ask  how  the  great  doc- 
trine of  the  correlation  of  forces  be- 
came established.  Its  first  absolute 
verification  occurred  about  1846,  when 
Dr.  Joule  showed  "  that  the  fall  of  772 
Ibs.  through  one  foot  will  raise  the 
temperature  of  a  pound  of  water  one 


76     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

degree  of  Fahrenheit."  l  When  this 
was  proved  it  gave  us  the  mechanical 
equivalent  of  heat,  and  the  theory 
acquired  a  truly  scientific  character. 
Similar  quantitative  correlations  were 
established  in  the  case  of  heat  and 
chemical  action  by  Dulong  and  Petit, 
and  in  the  case  of  chemical  action  and 
electricity  by  Faraday.  The  truth  of 
the  theory  is  wholly  a  question  of 
quantitative  measurement.  Now  you 
can  measure  heat,  you  can  measure 
electricity,  and  since  the  action  of 
nerves  in  all  probability  consists  of 
undulatory  motions  it  is  to  some  ex- 
tent measurable,  and  doubtless  would 
be  completely  measurable  had  we  the 
means.  But  when  you  come  to 

1  Herbert    Spencer,    First    Principles    (final 
ed.),  p.  185. 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     77 

thoughts  and  emotions,  I  beg  to  know 
how  you  are  going  to  work  to  give  an 
account  of  them  in  foot-pounds !  It 
is  not  simply  that  we  have  no  means 
at  hand,  no  calculus  equal  to  the  oc- 
casion ;  the  thing  is  absurd  on  its  face. 
It  is  as  true  to-day  as  it  was  in  the 
time  of  Descartes  that  thought  is  de- 
void of  extension  and  cannot  be  sub- 
mitted to  mechanical  measurement. 

It  appears  to  me,  therefore,  that 
what  we  should  really  find,  if  we  could 
trace  in  detail  the  metamorphosis  of 
motions  within  the  body,  from  the 
sense-organs  to  the  brain,  and  thence 
outward  to  the  muscular  system, 
would  be  somewhat  as  follows:  the 
inward  motion,  carrying  the  message 
into  the  brain,  would  perish  in  giving 
place  to  the  vibration  which  accom- 


78     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

panics  the  conscious  state ;  and  this 
vibration  in  turn  would  perish  in  giv- 
ing place  to  the  outward  motion,  car- 
rying the  mandate  out  to  the  muscles. 
If  we  had  the  means  of  measurement 
we  could  prove  the  equivalence  from 
step  to  step.  But  where  would  the 
conscious  state,  the  thought  or  feeling, 
come  into  this  circuit  ?  Why,  no- 
where. The  physical  circuit  of  mo- 
tions is  complete  in  itself;  the  state  of 
consciousness  is  accessible  only  to  its 
possessor.  To  him  it  is  the  subjective 
equivalent  of  the  vibration  within  the 
brain,  whereof  it  is  neither  the  cause 
nor  the  effect,  neither  the  producer  nor 
the  offspring,  but  simply  the  concom- 
itant. In  other  words  the  natural  his- 
tory of  the  mass  of  activities  that  are 
perpetually  being  concentrated  within 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     79 

our  bodies,  to  be  presently  once  more 
disintegrated  and  diffused,  shows  us 
a  closed  circle  which  is  entirely  physi- 
cal, and  in  which  one  segment  belongs 
to  the  nervous  system.  As  for  our 
conscious  life,  that  forms  no  part  of 
the  closed  circle  but  stands  entirely 
outside  of  it,  concentric  with  the  seg- 
ment which  belongs  to  the  nervous 
system. 

These  conclusions  are  not  at  all  in 
harmony  with  the  materialistic  view 
of  the  case.  If  consciousness  is  a  pro- 
duct of  molecular  motion,  it  is  a  nat- 
ural inference  that  it  must  lapse  when 
the  motion  ceases.  But  if  conscious- 
ness is  a  kind  of  existence  which 
within  our  experience  accompanies  a 
certain  phase  of  molecular  motion, 
then  the  case  is  entirely  altered,  and 


8o     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

the  possibility  or  probability  of  the 
continuance  of  the  one  without  the 
other  becomes  a  subject  for  further  in- 
quiry. Materialists  sometimes  declare 
that  the  relation  of  conscious  intelli- 
gence to  the  brain  is  like  that  of  music 
to  the  harp,  and  when  the  harp  is 
broken  there  can  be  no  more  music. 
An  opposite  view,  long  familiar  to  us, 
is  that  the  conscious  soul  is  an  emana- 
tion from  the  Divine  Intelligence  that 
shapes  and  sustains  the  world,  and  dur- 
ing its  temporary  imprisonment  in 
material  forms  the  brain  is  its  instru- 
ment of  expression.  Thus  the  soul  is 
not  the  music,  but  the  harper;  and 
obviously  this  view  is  in  harmony 
with  the  conclusions  which  I  have  de- 
duced from  the  correlation  of  forces. 
Upon  these  conclusions  we  cannot 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     81 

directly  base  an  argument  sustaining 
man's  immortality,  but  we  certainly 
remove  the  only  serious  objection 
that  has  ever  been  alleged  against  it. 
We  leave  the  field  clear  for  those 
general  considerations  of  philosophic 
analogy  and  moral  probability  which 
are  all  the  guides  upon  which  we  can 
call  for  help  in  this  arduous  inquiry. 
But  it  may  be  suggested  at  this  point 
that  perhaps  our  argument  has  ac- 
quired a  wider  scope  than  was  at  first 
contemplated.  Consciousness  is  not 
peculiar  to  man,  but  is  possessed  in 
some  degree  by  the  greater  portion  of 
the  animal  kingdom.  Among  the 
higher  birds  and  mammals  the  amount 
of  conscious  life^,  is  very  considerable, 
and  here  too  it  must  be  argued  that 
consciousness  is  not  a  product  of 


82     LIFE   EVERLASTING 

molecular  motion  in  the  nervous  sys- 
tem but  its  concomitant.  The  same 
argument  which  removes  the  objection 
to  immortality  for  man  removes  it 
also  for  an  indefinite  number  of  animal 
species.  What,  then,  is  to  be  said 
of  the  reasonableness  of  supposing  a 
future  life  for  sundry  lower  animals  ? 
and  if  we  were  to  reach  a  negative 
conclusion  in  their  case,  while  reach- 
ing a  positive  conclusion  in  the  case 
of  man,  on  what  principle  are  we  to 
draw  the  line?  Sometimes  we  hear 
this  question  propounded  as  a  diffi- 
culty in  the  Darwinian  theory  of  man's 
origin.  How  could  immortal  man 
have  been  produced  through  heredity 
from  an  ephemeral  brute  ? 

The    difficulty   is  one  of  the  sort 
which  we  are  apt  to  encounter  when 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     83 

we  try  to  designate  absolute  begin- 
nings and  to  mark  off  hard  and  fast 
lines,  for  in  Nature  there  are  no  such 
things.  Voltaire  asked  the  same  kind 
of  question  more  than  a  hundred  years 
before  Darwinism  had  been  heard  of. 
When  does  the  immortal  soul  of  the 
human  individual  come  into  exist- 
ence? Is  it  at  the  moment  of  con- 
ception, or  when  the  new-born  babe 
begins  to  breathe,  or  at  some  moment 
between,  or  even  perhaps  at  some  era 
of  early  childhood  when  moral  respon- 
sibility can  be  said  to  have  begun? 
Some  of  the  answers  to  these  questions 
would  transform  an  ephemeral  crea- 
ture into  an  immortal  one  in  the 
same  person.  The  most  proper  answer 
is  a  frank  confession  of  ignorance. 
Whether  it  be  in  the  individual  or  in 


84    LIFE   EVERLASTING 

the  race,  we  cannot  tell  just  where  the 
soul  comes  in.  A  due  heed  to  Na- 
ture's analogies,  however,  is  helpful  in 
this  connection.  The  maxim  that 
Nature  makes  no  leaps  is  far  from 
true.  Nature's  habit  is  to  make  pro- 
digious leaps,  but  only  after  long  pre- 
paration. Slowly  rises  the  water  in 
the  tank,  inch  by  inch  through  many 
a  weary  hour,  until  at  length  it  over- 
flows and  straightway  vast  systems  of 
machinery  are  awakened  into  rumbling 
life.  Slowly  grows  the  eccentricity 
of  the  ellipse  as  you  shift  its  position 
in  the  cone,  and  still  the  nature  of  the 
curve  is  not  essentially  varied,  when 
suddenly,  presto!  one  more  little 
shift,  and  the  finite  ellipse  becomes 
an  infinite  hyperbola  mocking  our 
feeble  powers  of  conception  as  it  speeds 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     85 

away  on  its  everlasting  career.  Per- 
haps in  our  ignorance  such  analogies 
may  help  us  to  realize  the  possibility 
that  steadily  developing  ephemeral 
conscious  life  may  reach  a  critical 
point  where  it  suddenly  puts  on  im- 
mortality. 

If  this  suggestion  is  a  sound  one, 
we  must  probably  regard  the  conscious 
life  of  animals  as  only  the  ephemeral 
adumbration  of  that  which  comes  to 
maturity  in  man.  The  considerations 
adduced  this  evening  must  convince 
us  that  we  are  at  perfect  liberty  to 
treat  the  question  of  man's  immortality 
in  the  disinterested  spirit  of  the  natu- 
ralist. In  the  course  of  evolution 
there  is  no  more  philosophical  diffi- 
culty in  man's  acquiring  immortal 
life  than  in  his  acquiring  the  erect 


posture  and  articulate  speech.  In  my 
little  book  "  The  Destiny  of  Man  "  I 
insisted  upon  the  dramatic  tendency 
or  divine  purpose  indicated  in  the 
long  cosmic  process  which  has  mani- 
festly from  the  outset  aimed  at  the 
production  and  perfection  of  the 
higher  spiritual  attributes  of  humanity. 
In  another  little  book,  "  Through  Na- 
ture to  God,"  I  called  attention  to 
the  fact  that  belief  in  an  Unseen 
World,  especially  associated  with 
the  moral  significance  of  life,  was 
coeval  with  the  genesis  of  Man,  and 
had  played  a  predominating  part  in 
his  development  ever  since,  and  I 
argued  that  under  such  circumstances 
the  belief  must  be  based  upon  an  eter- 
nal reality,  since  a  contrary  supposi- 
tion is  negatived  by  all  that  we  know 


LIFE   EVERLASTING     87 

of  the  habits  and  methods  of  the  cos- 
mic process  of  Evolution.  No  time 
is  left  here  to  repeat  these  arguments, 
but  I  hope  enough  has  been  said  to 
indicate  the  probability  that  the  pa- 
tient study  of  evolution  is  likely  soon 
to  supply  the  basis  for  a  Natural  The- 
ology more  comprehensive,  more  pro- 
found, and  more  hopeful  than  could 
formerly  have  been  imagined.  The 
Nineteenth  Century  has  borne  the 
brunt,  the  Twentieth  will  reap  the 
fruition. 


Electrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &>  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.  A. 


0  Hist  of  tlje 


THE  WRITINGS  OF 
JOHN  FISKE 

#• 

THE  DISCOVERT  OF  AMERICA 

With  som^  Account  of  Ancient  America  and  the  Spanish  Con- 
quest.    With  a  Steel  Portrait  of  Mr.  Fiske,  many  maps,  fac- 
similes, etc.    2  vols.  crown  8vo,  gilt  top,  $4.00. 
The  book  brings  together  a  great  deal  of  information  hitherto 
accessible  only  in  special  treatises,  and  elucidates  with  care  and 
judgment  some  of  the  most  perplexing  problems  in  the  history 
of  discovery.  —  The  Speaker  (London). 

OLD  VIRGINIA  AND  HER 
NEIGHBOURS 

2  vols.  crown  8vo,  gilt  top,  $4-00. 
Illustrated  Edition,  2  vols.  8vo,  $8.00. 

History  has  rarely  been  invested  with  such  interest  and  charm 
as  in  these  volumes.  —  The  Outlook  (New  York). 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  NEW 
ENGLAND 

Or,  the  Puritan  Theocracy  in  its  Relations  to  Civil  and  Re- 
ligious Liberty.     Crown  8vo,  $2.00.  Illustrated  Edition.  Con- 
taining Portraits,  Maps,  Facsimiles,  Contemporary  Views, 
Prints,  and  other  Historic  Materials.  2  vols.  8vo,  gilt  top,  $4-00- 
Having  in  the  first  chapters  strikingly  and  convincingly  shown 
that  New  England's  history  was  the  birth  of  centuries  of  travail, 
and  having  prepared  his  readers  to  estimate  at  their  true  impor- 
tance the  events  of  our  early  colonial  life,  Mr.  Fiske  is  ready  to 
take  up  his  task  as  the  historian  of  the  New  England  of  the  Puri- 
tans. —  Advertiser  (Boston). 

THE  DUTCH  AND  QUAKER 
COLONIES  IN  AMERICA 

With  8  Maps.    2  vols.  crown  8vo,  gilt  top,  $4.00. 
The  work  is  a  lucid  summary  of  the  events  of  a  changeful  and 
important  time,  carefully  examined  by  a  conscientious  scholar, 
who  is  master  of  his  subject.  —  Daily  News  (London). 


THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

With  Plans  of  Battles,  and  a  Steel  Portrait  of  Washington. 
2  vols.  crown  8vo,  gilt  top,  $4-00.  Illustrated  Edition.  Contain- 
ing about  300  Illustrations.     2  vols.  8vo,  gilt  top,  $8.00. 
The  reader  may  turn  to  these  volumes  with  full  assurance  of 
faith  for  a  fresh  rehearsal  of  the  old  facts,  which  no  time  can 
stale,  and  for  new  views  of  those  old  facts,  according  to  the  larger 
framework  of  ideas  in  which  they  can  now  be  set  by  the  master 
of  a  captivating  style  and  an  expert  in  historical  philosophy.  — 
New  York  Evening  Post. 

THE  WAR   OF  INDEPENDENCE 

In  Riverside  Library  for  Young  People.    With  Maps.    16mo, 
75  cents. 

A  book  brilliant  and  effective  beyond  measure.  ...  It  is  a 
statement  that  every  child  can  comprehend.  —  MBS.  CAROLINE 
H.  DALL,  in  the  Springfield  Republican. 

THE   CRITICAL  PERIOD  OF 
AMERICAN  HISTORY,   1783-1789 

With  Map,  Notes,  etc.  Crown  8vo,  gilt  top,  $2.00.  Illus- 
trated Edition.  Containing  about  170  Illustrations.  8vo,  gilt 
top,  $4-00. 

The  author  combines  in  an  unusual  degree  the  impartiality  of 
the  trained  scholar  with  the  fervor  of  the  interested  narrator. 
—  The  Congregationalist  (Boston). 

THE  MISSISSIPPI  YALLEY  IN 
THE   CIYIL  WAR 

With  23  Maps  and  Plans.     1  vol.  crown  8vo,  $2.00. 

A  HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED 
STATES  FOR  SCHOOLS 

With  Topical  Analysis,  Suggestive  Questions,  and  Directions 
for  Teachers,  by  F.  A.  Sill,  and  Illustrations  and  Maps. 
Crown  8vo,  $1.00,  net. 

It  is  doubtful  if  Mr.  Fiske  has  done  anything  better  for  his 
generation  than  the  preparation  of  this  text-book,  which  combines 
in  a  rare  degree  accuracy,  intelligent  condensation,  historical  dis- 
crimination, and  an  attractive  style.  —  The  Outlook  (New  York). 


CIVIL  GOVERNMENT  IK  THE 
UNITED  STATES 

Considered  with  some  Reference  to  its  Origins.  With  Ques- 
tions on  the  Text  by  Frank  A.  Hill,  and  Bibliographical  Notes 
by  Mr.  Fiske.  Crown  Svo,  $1.00,  net. 

It  is  most  admirable,  alike  in  plan  and  execution,  and  will  do 
a  vast  amount  of  good  in  teaching  our  people  the  principles  and 
forms  of  our  civil  institutions.  —  MOSES  COIT  TYLER,  Professor 
of  American  Constitutional  History  and  Law,  Cornell  University. 

A   CENTURY  OF   SCIENCE, 
AND  OTHER  ESSAYS 

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Mr.  Fiske's  freedom  from  exclusive  specialism  is  one  source 
of  his  eminence  as  a  teacher.  .  .  .  He  touches,  in  the  course  of 
his  career  as  writer  and  lecturer,  almost  every  department  of 
contemporaneous  human  interest,  and  he  touches  nothing  which 
he  does  not  adorn.  —  Advertiser  (Boston). 

OUTLINES  OF  COSMIC 
PHILOSOPHY 

Based  on  the  Doctrine  of  Evolution,  with  Criticisms  on  the 
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with  which  I  have  at  last  slowly  read  the  whole  of  your  work. 
...  I  never  in  my  life  read  so  lucid  an  expositor  (and  therefore 
thinker)  as  you  are ;  and  I  think  that  I  understand  nearly  the 
whole,  though  perhaps  less  clearly  about  cosmic  theism  and  cau- 
sation than  other  parts.  —  CHARLES  DARWIN. 

THE  DESTINY  OF  MAN 

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surely  or  rapidly  to  the  full  truth  than  men  like  the  author  of 
this  little  book,  who  reverently  study  the  works  of  God  for  the 
lessons  which  He  would  teach  his  children.  — Christian  Union 
(New  York). 

THE  IDEA  OF   GOD 

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is  a  scholar,  a  critic,  and  a  thinker  of  the  first  order.  —  Christian 
Register  (Boston). 


THROUGH  NATURE  TO  GOD 

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CONTENTS:  The  Mystery  of  Evil  ;  The  Cosmic  Boots  of  Love 
and  Self-Sacrifice  ;  The  Everlasting  Reality  of  Religion. 

The  little  volume  has  a  reasonableness  and  a  persuasiveness 
that  cannot  fail  to  commend  its  arguments  to  all.  —  Public 
Ledger  (Philadelphia). 

LIFE  EVERLASTING 

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A  book  of  profound  interest  treating1,  in  Mr.  Fiske's  charac- 
teristic manner,  the  subject  of  Immortality. 

DARWINISM,  AND  OTHER 

ESSAYS 

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MYTHS  AND  MYTH-MAKERS 

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THE  UNSEEN  WORLD 

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EXCURSIONS  OF  AN 
EVOLUTIONIST 

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than  Mr.  John  Fiske.  His  pure  style  suits  his  clear  thought.  — 
The  Nation  (New  York). 


*#*  For  sale  by  all  Booksellers.     Sent  by  mail,  postpaid,  on 
receipt  of  price  by  the  Publishers, 

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MESSRS.  HOUGHTON,  MTFFLIN  &  COMPANY  announce  the 
publication,  at  as  early  a  day  as  possible,  of  Dr.  Fiske's  latest 
work,  to  the  writing  of  which  he  had  devoted  the  last  two  years 
of  hia  life,  namely :  — 

NEW  FKANCE  AND 
NEW  ENGLAND 

This  work  forms  the  only  remaining  link  needed  to  complete 
the  chain  of  histories  of  this  country,  from  the  Discovery  of 
America  to  the  Adoption  of  the  Constitution,  upon  which  Dr. 
Fiske  had  for  so  many  years  been  engaged,  and  the  achievement 
of  which  was  his  great  ambition. 

The  volumes  already  published,  which  hold  undisputed  first 
rank  as  histories  of  the  periods  of  which  they  treat,  are  as  fol- 
lows, in  chronological  sequence  :  — 

THE  DISCOVERY  OF  AMERICA 

S  vols.  crown  8vo,  $4-00 

OLD  VIRGINIA  AND  HER  NEIGHBOURS 

2  vols.  crown  8vo,  $4.00 

THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

1  vol.  crown  8vo,  %2.00 

THE  DUTCH  AND  QUAKER  COLONIES 

2  vols.  crown  8vo,  $4-00 

THE  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 

2  vols.  crown  8vo,  $4-00 

THE  CRITICAL  PERIOD  OF  AMERICAN 
HISTORY 

1  vol.  crown  8vo,  $3.00 

In  this  series  the  work  on  NEW  FRANCE  AND  NEW  ENG- 
LAND will  now  supply  the  single  remaining  gap  between  THK 
DUTCH  AND  QUAKER  COLONIES  and  THE  AMERICAN  REVO- 
LUTION, thus  rounding  out  the  splendid  and  consecutive  group 
of  histories  which  Dr.  Fiske  projected  a  dozen  years  ago  and 
was  fortunately  permitted  to  achieve  before  his  death. 


HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 

Boston  and  New  York 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  AT  LOS  ANGELES 
THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 


This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 

f93@ 

g  2  193*? 
27  1936 

JUNl-., 
JAN  2  8  1952 

APR  4     1955 


Form  L,-9-15iH-3.'34 


BT 

921      Fiske   - 
F54  X    Life 


A     000  602  978     9 


UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFORNIA 


UBRABT 


